The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

done had always been held with herself alone. Mirela was too young and Danielle too estrangedto understand what happened at Lauren’s birthday party. And when Lauren told everyone at school that Danielle gave her a blackeye, she was the only person who knew it wasn’t true—not even Danielle knew. Right this second, Danielle could be alone inher bedroom on Wellington Lane, sitting on the edge of her canopy bed with its Laura Ashley floral bedspread and eyelet dustruffle tabbing out the chords to “Lithium” on her acoustic guitar and trying to remember if and when and how her head hadmade bruising contact with Lauren Brennan’s eye socket on ski bus two winters ago.

But this new secret was different, because someone else had seen the whole thing. Was seeing it. Had known from the start.

She had to keep the story straight. She had to remember what it was she told Mom about where she’d be late that evening. Had she said Paula’s house or Abby’s? Or rehearsal? Would Mom remember, had she been listening? What if she’d said Paula’s house, and then Paula called and Lauren wasn’t home? She could dissolve into these questions in the middle of any class, leaving the husk of her body behind. Words slid into page gutters, x and y axes switching places. Her outward attention idling on a patch of dried gum on the carpet, catching his anger. “Pay. Attention. Lauren. Thank you,” he said, almost like a hiss, like the sound Dad made when he wanted to yell and couldn’t.

“But she was paying attention,” Stitch murmured, from his desk directly behind her. She would have looked like a model student from behind—sittingup straight, head facing forward, hand holding pencil poised over her notebook. But Stitch couldn’t see all of her. She didn’twant him to, and she hadn’t asked him to. Even now, Stitch tried to be nice, but he was making assumptions.

She had to keep the characters straight, their motivations. The people at school and the people in the wood-paneled livingroom. There was a trench between the two spaces, an energy constantly traded between them, matter changing states: ardor thenanger, anger then ardor. His anger a substitute for his ardor. His anger a waste product of concealing his ardor. She wasennobled, inert; she sympathized with his predicament, and her sympathy exalted her. She saw her body lying along the trench,or her body as a single match dragged along its seam, her hand engulfed in flame as she tried the knob on the front door ofhis house at night, as she tried to write on his classroom blackboard, neat, calm, everybody watching and no pain.

She made him mad, he said. She drove him crazy, he said.

The trench opened up and he pulled her down, her arms tight around his neck to break her fall.

How strange and funny that everyone else thought they could see her, that all eyes were on her from every side, that Stitch presumed to know where her attention lay—that he could see her face through the back of her head. There she was, fumbling questions in English class, flailing around onstage, off-key, off-step, pissing off Mr. Smith again. That guy was always up her ass. How did she get cast in the first place? Oh, she couldn’t do anything right. There was her crazy mother and crazier sister all over the news. It’s just one thing after another with that family.

But no one could see what was really happening. What she was making happen. She could decide when she wanted to slip throughthe gap in the chain-link fence through the yards into a parallel world, behind one-way glass. She could look back throughthe glass and smile, and know it was real where she was, elemental, irradiated, irrefutable. A living world of soil and saltand blood. She could smile through the glass at everyone icebound, eyes midblink, mouths open and dumb, and she could laughat them, because they would never know, and they couldn’t know, they weren’t capable of knowing, because even if she toldthem, even if she were telling them right now, she could not prove it, and they would never believe her.

Jane

Arden Attachment Center — Intake Form for New Students Mirela Brennan, F D.O.B. 03/01/1988 (est.)

Principal goals: Focus student’s goals are to learn skills related to trust, cooperation, and family integration.

Facts about the student and family: Focus student is a ca. 4-year-old girl who resides in a single-family home in western New York State with her adoptive family: mother, father, sister aged 15, brothers aged 12 and 11. She has lived in the home for 6 months and previously resided in a state institution for children in Ghiorac, Romania. She was admitted to Arden for the 2-week therapeutic intensive with her adoptive mother.

Areas of strength: Focus student is described by her adoptive mother as bright, friendly, and outgoing in public settings. She has rapidly learned many English words and phrases and is eager to practice her English with people she meets at shops, playgrounds, etc. She has high energy and enjoys running, climbing, and acrobatics. She approaches peers with confidence and enthusiasm. She takes great interest in her siblings and in her natural surroundings.

Areas for growth: Focus student exhibits both indiscriminate attachment and resistance to attachment. She attempts to show physical affection to strangers in public places, in the form of hugs, kisses, and hand-holding. She asks strangers if they can take her home. She rejects physical affection from family members, particularly the adoptive mother. Adoptive mother reports that focus student displays physical affection only if she wants something or if she suspects that she is in trouble for misbehavior. She hides or hoards food while also declining most meals and snacks and disrupting family mealtimes. Focus student has physically damaged or destroyed toys, dolls, books, and furniture